All articles filed in Paul Zizka

Paul Zizka is a professional mountain landscape and adventure photographer based in Banff, Alberta. Specializing in photographing in difficult conditions and hard-to-reach places, Paul has a passion for shooting alpine sports and backcountry experiences, capturing the spirit of adventurers and finding unusual angles of common mountain subjects. Paul’s award-winning photos have been featured in a variety of publications, including Maclean’s, National Geographic Adventure, Canadian Geographic and Alpinist.

DATES: January 18-22, 2019 INSTRUCTORS: PAUL ZIZKA + WAYNE SIMPSON Spend four luxurious nights in the majestic Canadian Rockies! Make the Fairmont Chateau Lake Louise your ultimate winter base camp while you capture the beauty of the Canadian Rockies and fine-tune your skills under the guidance of experienced photographers on this once-in-a-lifetime photography tour.

I’ll admit it: the northern lights are intoxicating. For many years I’ve been drawn to cold, northerly destinations, both as a photographer and an adventurer. And beyond the desolate beauty and landscapes of these locations, whether it’s Greenland or Canada’s northern territories, it’s icing on the cake that they also provide us with the best opportunities to shoot the aurora borealis.

A few years ago, French filmmaker Mathieu Le Lay reached out to me with the idea for a film. Little did we know that the journey to capture footage would take us to the top of Mt. Whitehorn here in the Canadian Rockies, twice to the remote glaciers and fjors of Greenland and to the desert dunes of Namibia. I’m thrilled to finally be able to share the trailer of the film, which premieres on Ushuaïa TV this month. Follow In the Starlight on Facebook for updates on more screenings!

After a night shooting the northern lights, and running around to try to find breaks in the cloud cover, I finally decided to return to the Naiset Huts to catch a nap since I could no longer escape the clouds. Just as I was about the enter the cabin (which was already nearly full of fast-asleep people), I spotted a few stars glowing above the mountains.

Antarctica. It always seemed so unattainable to me. But after two days at sea, and a year of anticipation, I was mesmerized when we first caught sight of a few rocks off Elephant Island through the thick fog – harbingers of our imminent arrival on the fabled White Continent. There is no wilder place on Earth, nowhere more remote, more inhospitable.